Thursday, May 14, 2009

Buying books?

I had a discussion with my daughter at Christmas time. One of her friends was very, very into the Twilight series but was not buying the latest book until after payday. My daughter, a single, twenty-something, with a good job, was worried about her friend. Could she really be this poor? I worried that I hadn't presented the basics of the economy and budgets, but my daughter actually works in the accounting department of a rather large company. She must be going to hear about this stuff soon. On the other hand, maybe not. There seems to be a disconnect with so many people about this recession. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that retail sales in April declined for the second month in a row. The Dow took a tumble on the news. Frankly, Wall Street may have been surprised by the figures, but I wasn't. I knew I hadn't been shopping in April, nor were a lot of my acquaintance. We were hiding out at home, trying to figure out how to pay our taxes. Be that as it may, sales at bookstores rose last month even if only by .3%. I'm pretty sure that resale of books--at garage sales, Craig's list and e-bay is probably pretty good too. Too bad the stock market doesn't take note of those outlets. I hear Star Trek did pretty well last weekend at the box office too. So although other news reports are blaring about vacations canceled and a travel industry in trouble, we all need to have someplace to escape to. So here's the question: Are you buying books? Waiting for payday? Going to the library? And while you're at it--what makes you buy a book? Reviews? Ads in your favorite magazine? Tell all!

There's other areas doing remarkedly well right now. I know one chain of bookstores that specializes in 'remainders' and 'overstocks' and their sales are up. One store's sales are up by 28% over last year!!

I'm buying books. I've bought eleven so far this month and my wife has bought at least that many. Two were books by authors I knew, some were must-haves by authors I'd never pass up (Robert Crais and George Pelecanos) and others were books whose titles or covers just grabbed. I also bought The Martian Chronicles, which I read 40 years ago and wanted to see if was as good as I remembered. (It is.)